My Husband's Wife(127)

Then, when you’re out in that real world again, that’s when the doubts come crowding back in. That’s when you start to think. If I hadn’t married Ed … if my boss hadn’t put me in charge of Joe’s appeal when I was too young and inexperienced … if I hadn’t allowed my feelings to take over … if we hadn’t met Carla and her mother … if I hadn’t had that drink with Joe in Highgate … if I hadn’t dropped my key … if I hadn’t defended Carla … if I hadn’t opened that envelope …

‘You mustn’t think about the ifs,’ says Ross. He’s been one of my regular visitors at home back in Devon, where I’ve been since they discharged me. There will always be a scar on the side of my head from my fall against the wall, although it might not show so much when my hair has grown back. My cracked ribs (hence the agonizing pain in my chest) have mended now. But my wrist is still playing up, and I no longer wear the honeymoon bracelet which was caught between me and the wall when I fell over. My ankle, which cracked as I went down, is ‘coming along’.

‘Ifs will drive you mad,’ he continues. ‘You did your best, Lily. You really did. And if you made a few mistakes along the way, well, that’s life.’

Mum comes into the room with a tray of coffee for our visitor and hears the end of the last sentence. She catches my eye and then looks away. But it’s too late. I know what she’s thinking. If I’m really going to heal, I have to tell the truth. The very last part of my story. The bit I never told my husband, or the grief counsellor the hospital encouraged me to see.

Ross is a good friend. I owe it to him. And, maybe more importantly, I owe it to myself.

I was eleven when my parents took on Daniel. It wasn’t the first time they’d brought children into the house. Remember that little brother and sister who Dad kept saying I was going to have? Only later did I find out that Mum had had one miscarriage after another. So my parents turned to fostering to give me ‘company’.

Of course, it was brilliant of them to do it. But it didn’t feel like that at the time.

Some of the kids were all right. Others weren’t. There were times when I’d come back from school to find Mum playing with a three-year-old. I’d want to talk to her about my day, but she would be too busy. The social worker would be coming to do a check. Or she had to take the child to the doctor because he or she had a wheezy chest.

I wouldn’t have minded except that they weren’t real brothers and sisters. They took my parents away from me. And they made me feel different. My friends at school thought it was weird that my socially aware parents took in one kid after another, looking after them for anything from a few days to a year before they’d go away and others would replace them.

Eventually, my parents got the message. ‘You’re going to have a full-time brother,’ my father announced one morning. I remember it well. We were eating boiled eggs at the time, in our home in London. A trim, neat, semi-detached house with pebble-dash. Nothing bigger, even though my mother’s family were quite well off, because that didn’t suit my parents’ socialist principles. ‘He’s had a rough start to life,’ my mother said. ‘Poor little thing had parents who were … well, who did bad things. So sometimes he behaves badly too. He’s been in and out of foster homes, but now we’re going to adopt him. Give him a proper home.’ She gave me a comforting hug. ‘And you can help too, Lily, by being a kind big sister. You must look after him with us.’

And then Daniel arrived.

He was a year younger than me but looked older with his tall, lanky stance and a wild mass of tousled black hair. With hindsight, my parents could have thought it through more carefully. But they wanted to make a difference – to take the child no one else would. Later I found out that Daniel’s mother had been a prostitute, addicted to heroin, although he used to claim she was a trapeze artist in a circus. (He was good at embroidering facts to make them more exciting.) His father was in prison for a drug-induced double killing. (Daniel never spoke of him.)

From the minute he arrived, Daniel began to push the boundaries. No, he wouldn’t go to school. No, he wouldn’t come home when he’d promised. No, he hadn’t stolen money from Mum’s purse. Didn’t we trust him?

In fact, there was only one person whom Daniel trusted.

‘You,’ says Ross quietly. I glance out of the window on to the lawn where Tom is playing croquet with my father. He throws his mallet in the air with joy when he gets the ball through the hoop, just as Daniel used to. He stamps his foot on the ground when he misses a shot. At times, the similarities are extraordinary, even though there is no blood link.

Nature or nurture? I often wonder.

‘Yes,’ I say softly. ‘Daniel trusted me. For some reason, he latched on to me. Adored me. But I let him down.’

Ross’s hand is holding mine. Firmly. Comfortingly. Non-judgementally. I think of how Ross helped me through Ed’s betrayals. And I know that just as Daniel trusted me, so I can trust Ross. I won’t just tell him the half-version of Daniel’s death that I told Joe at the pub. Or the version I gave Ed where I left out a vital scene.

I will tell Ross the whole truth.

It was the other girls at school that started it. They all fancied my adopted brother. He was so good-looking: so tall, with that mop of hair and slightly lopsided, endearing smile. How he made everyone laugh! Daniel specialized in playing the classroom fool. He would answer back. Make fun of the teachers. Get into trouble. The more he got told off, the worse he became. He started stealing other kids’ money and then swearing blind it wasn’t him.